Many other industries have been struggling in the recession, I don't see them engaging in anti-consumer nonsense like this, they restructure, innovate and try to be more consumer friendly to sell more of their product. They don't attempt to control what their customers do with their purchases. Why should the games industry be a special case?

Maybe the publishers and developers could adopt a more realistic business model, one which doesn't depend on them selling several hundred thousand copies of a game just to break even or facing financial ruin if a game tanks. Or maybe, just maybe, they could stop churning out identikit sequels, milking their existing franchises to death with ever-diminishing returns and make more compelling games instead.

Many PC developers seem to get by just fine with smaller budgets (Positech, Paradox, Stardock, Popcap etc) and make plenty of money skillfully targetting niches instead of taking constant shit or bust punts on blockbusters. Of course, that'd be more difficult than crapping all over your customers, nickel and diming them with DLC which could quite easily have been a part of the main game and trying to restrict their rights over what they've bought.

Every company selling an IP related product actually attempts to control resell of its product..

Can you resell the song you buy on itunes , the e-books you buy for your kindle ?

Instead of reselling, they increased the value of a pirated copy tenfold.

My 2 cents.

I think PC gaming has evolved enough that it should adopt the TV or Theater models of viewer ship. Theatre uses super cheap. $10 a game.

Or use the TV model. While playing AC2, during a load scene you watch a Nike commercial :P. yeah it's going to break immersion.

but hell I think most people will still play the game regardless. It's free after all.. As long as it doesn't happen during the middle of game play.

Though I think Zenfolder and Ubisoft are up to something. What if you had an option to have your games online. Game play comes from servers, but this would ultimately allow for special style of game play streamed from the servers during play. Making people who are online and verified receiving more and interesting content than those off line. Don't limit the game to only online and verified, just encourage spending of the money.

Yep that's why Apple and Amazon are doing so badly.

/sarcasm off

Seen it already. Not that it makes it any less disgusting. A company that has to resort to screwing their customers so hard reeks of a company that is desperate for money. Now, wanting to make a crapload of money is NEVER a bad thing. You are a company, after all. NEVER at the expense of the customer, however. The customer is always right and eventually your crappy DRM scheme will backfire horribly.

For those wondering: "But the console versions sell so much better than the PC version. There won't be too much problem." Indeed, they sell better on consoles. But once the companies lose their PC audiences, who's to guarantee that they won't try something extremely ugly on the consoles too? Nobody, that's who.

Well since iTunes hasn't had DRM in years, yeah I think you could resell them. Kindle? No thanks- for this very reason. What about books, CDs, DVDs? I'm not sure what corporatist mindset you come from, but I for one would like to do what I want with property I payed for. I hate GameStop as much as the next guy, but the solution isn't to prevent people from lending or trading games. Nice to know that the poor mega-corps have managed to dupe somebody into doing their bidding. This is a slippery slope where pretty soon the buyer has no rights at all. 

Wow. Just... wow.

Seriously, are you retarded? You really are making a complete fool of yourself in this thread. Zenfolder's bad enough, but you're in a wholly ignorant league of your own. You've already been taken to the cleaners by Khuutra and you're still coming out with this utterly idiotic pish. You're completely out of your depth on this, give it up for heaven's sake, you really don't have a clue.

It's a paper argument.

When you factor in the number of households that own a current PC capable of playing something like AC2, that 26% number (which unless stated otherwise, may well include households that don't own ANY sort of computer at all) is a 26% developers like Ubisoft don't need to cater to because they're not potential customers in the first place.

Factor in who among those 26% of households with lower incomes that actually prioritize buying $50 games if they even have the hardware capable of playing them and you're left with an even smaller number. Higher income households without network connectivity or in rare cases, computers of any kind would have minimal to no interest in video games of any sort to begin with, leaving you with even few potential customers among that 26%. What you're left with is a negligible number.

If there's a big enough backlash, Ubisoft will just have to find another way to implement controls.

For many consumers, they'll just find it easier to simply game on a console like many already have this generation. Publishers will continue to rely more upon console sales to translate to game sales with DD taking the lead for the PC market.

A pirated copy of something commercially available isn't worth a cent.

Legit digital distribution, if anything, seems to have reduced the resale value of even legit physical media. Trade in values on things like CDs, DVDs and even games are typically laughable when not reselling direct to individuals. Pirated copies, including copies of non-tranferable files bought through legit means (DRM free iTunes files, Kindle e-books, etc.) generally aren't worth anything other than in trade.

Can't say I know of many people looking to buy copies of someone else's e-books or "used" MP3s, not that there aren't people out there who have no other means of obtaining them other than buying them through legitimate means.

But if you mean that cracked copies of software is worth more than legit software to the user due to being easier to use, that's a valid point that publishers really need to pay attention to.